Shadows and Lies
by SassyJ
Summary: It's the anniversary of Ari's death and Ziva is holidaying in Miami. But all is not as it appears and when she sees someone in the street who shouldn't be there, Ziva starts to fear she is losing her mind. Or is someone trying to drive her out of it?
1. Author's Note

I forget who originally asked the question, but someone asked how could Ari be brought back to NCIS… which naturally set my brain to thinking, how could one re-introduce a dead man? Could it be sufficiently compelling without being ridiculous? Dreams and body doubles being somewhat over-used.

Curiously it was Ziva who gave me the answer.

Kate and Ari are still dead. Ziva takes a holiday, it's the anniversary of Ari's death and her part in it is still painful to her…


	2. Trapped

The ground beneath his knees was hard and gritty, the surface cold seeping into his joints. He was desperate to move, but forced into the kneeling position, his hands bound behind him and pulled up high; the pressure on his shoulders keeping him bent forward. He could get no leverage to get to his feet. So the pain went on and on.

They had stripped him naked, hood over his head. The cloth was thick and dark. At first he had tried to shake it off, but some sort of string kept it close around his neck. He could hear noises around him, and the sudden yank on his bound wrists forcing his arms up higher, the pressure on his shoulders intolerably painful he realized his mistake. Struggling would bring more pain.

He tried to calculate how long he had been there. If he could keep contact with reality, he could survive.

He was a survivor. When he'd first been caught by the police, he had done everything they wanted. Covering his own backside, he had given up the thugs he hired to protect his business. He got five years, despite the death of the officer. He had kept his head down and done his time, a virtual ghost in prison, carefully compliant. Incarceration was not to his taste.

Stepping out into the summer's heat, he had taken his first free breath of Miami's air. _Freedom_.

Now he knew that he had been followed from the first. They had snatched him almost right outside the parole officer's office. He wanted to fight back, but he had been easily subdued. Some kind of thick cloth had been pressed to his face and he inhaled fumes. As he passed out his one final thought, weakly voiced. "Why?"

Even now as he knelt in fear and pain, the word was screaming in his head.

"Why?"


	3. Distraction

A beautiful day. She tilted her head back a little, the breeze flowing over the car's open top tumbling her long dark hair. Ziva accelerated, keeping pace with the car in front. Such a beautiful day, if only the memory would not intrude, she would be happy.

If only she could not remember. The instrument of her brother's death. Her part. Her Ari, lost forever. Svengali or not, he was still her brother, the big brother that she ran to as a child. She knew his faults, and now she understood, understood what Eli had done. It did not excuse his betrayal, but she was clear why he had. She could even feel his pain, but not his cruelty.

Conflict. Emotions stirred within her. She gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. It was useless to imagine that she could be free of the memory, even if the only memories she wanted of her precious brother where happier and long distant.

Before he became a soulless killer. Before she was forced to take the shot that ended his life.

The lights changed, and she slowed, dropping down the gears to come to rest in front of the crossing.

A tall lean-built man stepped out, something in the tilt of his head, his gait, reminded her. "Ari?" He was in her head and she called out his name without meaning to.

The man turned, and she froze, for a few seconds his dark eyes met hers. Then a look of sheer terror crossed his face, and he turned away and ran.

The percussive blast of memory and the shock of seeing his face… she reached for the gear stick, shunted into gear and accelerated. The sound of the horn exploded, a split second before the truck powered into the little sports car, hurling it sideways. Ziva's head collided with the door, and she saw stars.

She could hear shouts all around her, her head was spinning, but all she could think of was Ari… there in front her… impossible… her brother was dead.

"Miss, miss…."

The jabbering voice in her ear finally penetrated, and Ziva put a hand up to her aching head, turning to face the truck driver.

"I'm alright…" she muttered absently, reaching over, she tried to open the door. His hand was on the door handle, and he was pulling it open, she moved to stand up, and suddenly he seemed curiously far away. Her knees seemed to disappear, and she wobbled. His hand was on her arm, and the sound of sirens in distance were curiously comforting as he guided her to sit back down in the battered little car.

"I am fine." Ziva banked her temper down, shouting at the paramedic would not help; but she wanted to get this over and done with. To slink away and try to get the image of Ari out of her head.

Ari was dead and gone. The man in the street just looked a little like him, and her imagination did the rest.

"Miss." A different voice intruded on her reverie, and Ziva turned her head. The voice was deep, slightly gravelly, attractive. The man removed his sunglasses and tilted his head a little. Studying her. Red hair, a fair complexion and piercing blue eyes; Ziva studied him, this man was a very different prospect from the uniform officer who had already taken her statement.

She shielded her eyes with her hand as she looked up at him, the setting sun catching the lights in his flame red hair. "I have already given your officer my statement."

He smiled, "Lieutenant Horatio Caine, ma'am. This is merely a formality, it isn't everyday that an agent of a government agency has a crash in the street." The piercing blue eyes stared straight into hers and Ziva had the uncomfortable feeling that Horatio Caine would be no more easy to fool than a certain Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, and she would be better off not trying.

His blue eyes were kind, like Gibbs, and on this day, with her feelings still raw she was in need of kindness.

"I saw a man who couldn't be there. My brother, Ari."


	4. Who are you?

He ran. The girl in the sports car had recognised him, as she called out his name he panicked. They would find him, she had found him, she knew him, she would tell them where he was… He was not safe on the streets.

He still could not believe his luck in his escape.

He had no idea of time. He knew he knelt for hours on the concrete, the pain in his shoulders constant as his bound wrists were forced up behind him. Eventually someone had come and they had dragged him to his feet. He was held by two people, he could tell that, dragged between them. His numbed legs stumbling, almost unable to support his weight.

The heavy cloth was still over his head.

He was dumped in a chair, the tie around his wrists was cut, and he whimpered as his sore arms dropped to his sides. His wrists were roughly grabbed and bound together, in front this time. A bright light was switched on, and it penetrated the thick cloth. He squinted as the hood was yanked off. The sudden blast of light acutely painful. He turned his head away and squeezed his eyes closed.

A needle pricked his arm.

"Your name is Dr Ari Haswari." The voice surprised him. "You work for Mossad." The sheer ordinariness of the voice confused him, he could not comprehend the strange things that the voice was saying to him.

A hand tilted his head back, blearily he tried to focus on the face, but his vision was blurring and none of it made any sense. "He's not convinced. We need to convince him."

He tried to take in what was being said, why they kept calling him Ari, he was nearly certain that was wrong, but he couldn't work out why. He was being carried… and laid down on a hard flat surface. His bound wrists yanked up above his head, and fastened to something, his legs tied down. The cloth laid over his face.

The water came, cascading over his head, it was everywhere, the cloth clinging to his face, he thrashed and struggled, and suddenly another strap pinned his wrists brutally hard down to the plank he was lying on. He could barely squirm, but still he fought the suffocating cloth and the cascading water.

He was drowning and he thrashed in panic. He did not want to die. The water continued to pour over him and he began to beg. Incoherent phrases wrenched from the depths of his terror.

Eventually, they stopped.

He lay there, soaked and shivering with fear and cold. "Dr Ari Haswari… that is your name." He tried to nod. "You don't look convinced. I think you need some more convincing."

More pain. Endless pain.

Through the beatings and the half-drownings, and the needle pricks in his arms; the calm voice telling him that he was Dr Ari Haswari, of Mossad, and that he had a job to do.

Anything… he would agree to anything, just so that the pain would stop.

Then, that morning, the cuff on his left wrist was loose. It was going to hurt to pull his hand out, but what was more pain amongst so much. He yanked his wrist and hand through the steel band, the bracelet leaving a long bloodied scrape on his wrist and thumb.

It was all a jumble, how he found the sweats, and a white tee shirt, much washed and too big, but it would have to do. A pair of worn trainers, almost as though they had been put there for him to find. He moved more cautiously then, something did not feel right. But his need for freedom, for the pain to stop, was too strong to be denied.

He moved cautiously at first. Dodging in and out of doorways, concerned with putting distance between himself and his captors. He hunched over a little, pulling the hood of his jacket up. But the heat was too much and he pushed it down again. Too hot and such concealment would be too memorable. Why he thought this, and how he could have known such a thing a mystery.

He was too tired to think.

He reached the crossing and stepped out, scarcely aware that the crossing was in his favour…

His name…? He couldn't remember, he just remembered 'Ari' being associated with his pain. His tee shirt was sticking to him, and he knew that it wasn't the sweat that was causing it. He still bled from the last beating. They were everywhere, all around him, and with the last of his strength he fled. Before he could be recaptured.

* * *

><p>"Describe him." Horatio Caine leaned forward a little, offering a reassuring smile to the young woman in the seat opposite him.<p>

Ziva's answering smile held a lot of pain, and he wondered about that as she began to describe the man she had seen. As she talked, he drew a picture in his mind, and his mind grew still. Frozen in time.

Another place, Speedle dying on the marble floor of the jewellers. The German who fronted the operation. He turned, then he remembered free on licence and recently gone missing. There was a live warrant out.

A mix of emotions as Horatio uttered the name who he would always associate with Speed's death. "Rudy Koehler."

Ziva stared at him curiously as he leaned over and typed something in to the computer.

A picture came up on screen. Then all she could do was stare. Koehler could have been Ari's twin.


End file.
